Residents’ involvement in Planning Decisions.

One of the biggest changes to local planning governance for decades comes into force in November with a move from locally determined committee referral rules to a nationally prescribed system.  Preserving involvement is Planning Decisions is vital to preserve residents engagement and interest in Local Government.

Planning Committee Changes

After 31 October 2026, public involvement in planning decisions in England does not end, but public participation through planning committee meetings will be significantly reduced because many smaller applications must be decided by planning officers rather than committees.  This is estimated to reduce Planning Committee meetings to approximately 30% of current levels.  Planning Committees will be held for applications where the Chief Planning Officer in charge of Planning and Committee Chair of the Committee agree it should go to Committee.  The Chief Planning Officer has the final authority in this matter.

The new regulations don’t abolish public consultation and involvement in planning decisions.

Statutory publicity and consultation requirements for planning applications remain. Residents can still:

• submit objections and representations;
• comment during consultation periods;
• participate where committee hearings occur under local speaking rules.

From 31 October 2026 Planning Committees are reduced in number as

• Councillor  "call-in" powers are effectively removed
• objection thresholds that automatically trigger committee consideration are no longer relevant;
• committees become focused on applications involving significant economic, social, environmental or planning-policy issues.

Unclear Speaking Rules

There appears to be no legislation banning Organisations and Members of the public speaking at the remaining Planning Committee Meetings.  The rules are unclear, but it appears this is probably at the invitation of the Committee Chair.  In the case of a contentious application, it would be perverse not to invite one or two speakers to present to the committee.  It will be interesting to see what rules WSC implements for this.

Preserving Public Participation

Planning issues are often contentious and are a cause of friction between residents and local government.  Limiting participation will make the lack of involvement in Local Politics even worse that it is now. 

Central government has been appalling at communicating what it is trying to do to the Planning System and is exacerbating a feeling that it is intent on foisting a housing target on local communities with no understanding of local context.  The perception is that we have a bunch of ‘Spreadsheet Jockeys’ with simplistic formula driving the planning system taking no account of about 89% of the borough currently lies within the Green Belt, the Surrey Hills National Landscape, and major infrastructure capacity is constrained.

The Council Could Improve Matters

There are several steps the Guldford Borough Council (GBC)/West Surrey Council (WSC) could take to improve public participation in the planning process, by focussing on the on the start of the planning process by:

• Encouraging Developers to discuss Ideas earlier.  Developers should be encouraged to show options and ideas as early as possible.
• Validate the Public Consultation process, too often developers show a few posters and have the consultations staffed by poorly briefed staff.  There is no reason that Planning Officers shouldn’t attend consultation events to validate quality of presentation and engagement.
• Demand all major developments to use Computer Modelling to demonstrate issues such as views, shadowing and street experience to a far greater extent.  Computer Graphics allow new development to be viewed dynamically e.g. walking down the street rather than a series of static representations.   (It’s ironic in a town that prides itself on advanced computer graphics in the Games Industry, that the local council won’t ask for the latest well proven technology)
• Have a clear policy on how the public can contribute to Planning Commitee Debates.